Beep… beep… beep…
Ugh. My alarm. I peel my eyes open, and yeah, I'm definitely in my high-rise apartment. Morning, I guess. Should've stayed under the covers.
Then, BAM! White light. Not like the sun, either. White. And it's not just bright, it's like...it's like my eyeballs are on fire. My hearing? Gone. Just...nothing.
A few moments? Felt like forever. Then, sound starts creeping back in, kinda muffled, distant. Vision's a blur, too. What the...where the...
Okay, vision's mostly back. And...what the hell? I'm in some kind of cockpit. Like, a plane, but not. Spaceship-y? I'm strapped in, tight. Metal bars, a whole cage thing around me. Like one of those...those zero-G chambers? Only my upper body is visible, sticking out of this V-shaped glass thing.
And through the glass... whoa. Planet. A whole freaking planet hanging right there. Swirling clouds, blue and green...it's insane. Beautiful, but insane.
"What is going on?!" I'm freaking out. My heart's hammering. Where am I? How did I get here? One second, I'm in my bed, the next...this? This thing?
Then, a voice. Not in my ears, but...in my head? You are the last of your race. It's cold, distant. You will land on the planet very soon. For an experiment.
Experiment? Last of my race? What in the holy... I can't breathe. I'm going to be sick. I gotta get out of here!
"Calm down," another voice says, smoother, more...there. I am your temporary guide...to survival.
Survival? What survival? I'm trapped in a metal coffin, heading towards some alien planet, and I'm the last human alive!
It's not so bad, the smooth voice echoed in my head again, the temporary guide thing. Think of it this way: you are now… special. The only human in the cosmos.
"Special?!" I choked out, rattling against the metal restraints. "Special? I'm the last man alive, strapped into some alien tin can, about to be part of an 'experiment'! How is that not bad?!" My breath hitched, coming in ragged gasps. My heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my ribs. Special? Was it insane?
Your elevated heart rate and stress indicators are counterproductive, the AI stated, its tone flat, clinical. Initiating calming measures.
Calming mea—? What does that—? A weird, heavy feeling washed over me, starting in my limbs. My thoughts got fuzzy, sticky, like wading through syrup. My eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. "No... wait..." The panic was still there, but distant, muffled, as the world dissolved into blackness.
/ Time skip: Hours later /
Grogginess… shaking… heat? My eyes snapped open. The V-shaped glass in front of me was glowing red-hot at the edges. Outside, streaks of fire ripped past against a darkening sky. We were falling. Fast.
Subject awake, the AI chimed in my head, startling me. Atmospheric entry proceeding. Prepare for landing.
"Landing? How? This thing... it's just a shuttle, right? Where are the engines? How are you controlling this?" Panic clawed its way back up my throat, fresh and sharp.
This is a non-powered reentry vehicle. Trajectory was set upon deployment. Control is not necessary.
"Not... necessary?" I repeated, my voice cracking. "No engine? No power? We're just a rock falling out of the sky?!" Oh god, oh god, oh god. This was it. Splat. The last human, smeared across an alien landscape.
/ Time skip: A short while later /
The shaking intensified violently. The roar outside was deafening, even through whatever barrier this pod had.
Altitude five hundred meters. Brace for impact, the AI announced, calm as ever.
This was it. I squeezed my eyes shut, teeth clenched, every muscle tensed, waiting for the end. Just… impact. That's all it said. How bad would it—
BOOM!
An explosion like nothing I'd ever heard. A massive, gut-wrenching impact that slammed me forward against the restraints, then back. Metal shrieked and groaned all around me. Everything went dark for a second, maybe debris hitting the glass? Then... silence. Stillness.
I was alive. My ears were ringing, but I was breathing. The panic I expected to feel, the terror... it was gone. Replaced by this weird, floaty calm. Huh. I thought I'd be screaming my head off, but… I felt… okay? Super soothed, almost. That was definitely unexpected.